The Spy Across the Table

by Barry Lancet

  The rattling of the chassis and the gritty rumble of the tires prevented us from hearing what was said. Would Chen use his gun if the tide turned? No, I decided, but I would, if given the chance to grab it. I was not going back.

  The cop in the driver’s seat said something to Chen, whose retort was acerbic and accompanied by a wry smile. The three of them laughed.

  “What?” I said.

  “The prison staff is asking about the personal effects you left behind. I told them an enemy of the State had no right to any possessions and they should burn them and send the ashes to America.

  “Will they?”

  “Of course not. They will sell everything and divide the cash.”

  In front of the colossal penitentiary with the mile-long walls we rejoined the paved roadway. The ride evened out and the constant stabbing aches from the rocking car gave way to a dull throbbing of muscles and nerves too frequently abused of late.

  Forty-five minutes later we entered a small town, pulled into a lot next to a gas station, and stopped alongside an official-looking black sedan with a government license plate. Chen affixed his chop to a second set of papers and thanked the policemen in overalls. Before driving off, the most senior of them noted the license plate on our ride, nodded a last time at Chen, then dropped behind the wheel, and guided the Geely out of the lot. We stepped into the waiting vehicle and hit the road.

  “Aren’t they worried about leaving you without a guard?”

  “You are cuffed hand and foot, and I have a gun.”

  “What about the car plates? The cop took a good look.”

  He gave me a tight grin. “They are copies of Chen’s plates.”

  “So we’re safe?”

  “No. We have a long way to go.”

  “China Rules?”

  “Unhappily, yes.”

  * * *

  We rode in silence until we reached the highway. Meanwhile, I considered the idea of China Rules inside China and felt nearly as vulnerable as I had in prison. If you want to live a long life, trust no one or no thing. Not Party, country, friend, or sky.

  “What is it you do normally?” I asked.

  Outside, endless high-plains scrubland stretched to the horizon in every direction.

  “Oh, I am a mere cog.”

  “What kind of cog?”

  “A humble servant of the people. Of no importance.”

  “And your day job?”

  “I work for the Chinese post office.” My face collapsed. Chen caught my disappointment and said, “I clean up pretty good, don’t you think? I am a manager and supervise seventeen people. Does that reassure you?”

  “That depends. Have you ever fired that gun you have under your coat?”

  “On a range, yes.”

  “Ever shoot anyone?”

  “No.”

  “And if we were, say, pulled over by a patrol that had orders to take us back to the Farmhouse, would you shoot them?”

  “Certainly not. Weren’t you listening? I work for the post office.”

  * * *

  As we drove, the stark high-plains emptiness gradually gave way to swaying fields of rice, corn, and soy. With hours yet to go before we reached the Mongolian border, I slept through the first roadside stop.

  When I woke an hour later, I noticed my escort looked different. He had re-combed his hair. No, that wasn’t right. His hair broke differently and it was of a coarser texture. He’d removed a wig.

  But that wasn’t the end of his transformation. I was looking at the same man who was somehow not the same at all, but I didn’t understand why.

  “Aside from the hair, what else has changed?” I asked.

  Chen smiled at me via the rearview mirror. “Good, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but why?”

  “I took off makeup.”

  “You weren’t wearing any.”

  “Oh, but I was. Light and subtle and hard to detect in normal situations, impossible in poorly lit places like the Farmhouse. I studied for six months under an expert.”

  Unmasked, he bore only the faintest resemblance to the man he had impersonated. I searched with diligence to uncover similarities. The building blocks were there but needed to be assembled in a precise fashion to be effective. Diabolical and clever beyond belief.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked, still concerned about his trustworthiness and the master spy’s ultimate plan.

  “I am helping my cousin.”

  “Zhou?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I owe him.”

  “How?”

  Skepticism guided my questioning. I worried about our direction. Were we really headed toward the border? Town names came up on the road signage, in Chinese and occasionally in English, but—this being China—no mention of Mongolia appeared anywhere. We could be en route to the execution ground, for all I knew.

  “Ten years ago my cousin happened to notice I bore a similar facial structure to one of his most dangerous opponents. I also had a cleft palate. Even without the deformity, I was an ugly man. Zhou offered to pay for an operation.”

  “And for your education in Switzerland?”

  His look grew cautious. “You are a thoughtful man, but yes.”

  “Why would you allow him to change you like that? Fixing the cleft palate I understand, but do you look anything like you used to?”

  “There is a hint of my heritage. He first sent me to South Korea, where some of the best plastic surgeons in Asia practice. Then to Switzerland. Now I have a beautiful wife. Before the operation, I never once dated a woman or was considered eligible material for matchmaking. Women could not stand to look at me.”

  “So you wanted a wife?”

  “Having a normal family life was all I asked for, but over the years my cousin provided three million more reasons in an overseas bank account in my name. American reasons.”

  “Very generous.”

  “He can be that way.”

  I thought about the time frame. “This was ten years ago?”

  “There is a Chinese saying: ‘The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.’ ”

  “I know it.”

  “We Chinese always plan ahead.”

  His comment only served to increase my disquiet.

  Chen swung onto an exit ramp. “We are making a slight detour.”

  “Anything you want to tell me?”

  My ears popped. We’d climbed to a higher altitude. Grazing lands had dislodged tilled fields.

  “You are in for some changes.”

  I stiffened but said nothing.

  At the top of the ramp, the road curled to the left. We drove for a mile. A forest of Mongolian oak and pine sprang up on both sides of the road. Chen slid the sedan behind an abandoned cabin, beckoned me to follow, and stepped crisply from the car. I trailed after him with caution. Practically speaking, I remained a prisoner. Chen had removed my restraints once we’d left our police escort behind, but that meant nothing. As he had pointed out, I couldn’t make it far on my own.

  We entered through a back door. The cabin was old and drafty and unoccupied. Sweeping up a box of matches on a countertop, Chen lit a candle in the center of a rickety wooden table. The candle illuminated a kitchen strung with cobwebs and a faded photograph of Chairman Mao pinned to a wall.

  “No electricity,” my guide said.

  Two brown bags awaited us on the table. Chen passed one to me. “Blond hair dye. Mix the two tubes in equal amounts, work it into your hair, then rinse in twenty minutes. There is a false moustache in there too. Dye it as well.”

  “All right.”

  “In the shower room you will find three buckets of water. That’s all we have. I will have a set of clean clothes waiting.”

  “And what will you do in the meantime?”

  He rubbed his cheeks. “I will certainly shave, for one. Now you must go. Time is short.”

  So I went and did as instruct
ed. When I returned, slung over the back of a chair I found a pair of generic jeans and a knockoff powder-blue Ralph Lauren polo shirt with the apricot-orange logo over the left breast.

  Chen wore a new suit. Black with a pressed white shirt and a pewter-gray tie. His hair was oiled, parted on the opposite side, and brushed back at the front. On the table rested a chauffeur’s hat and a pair of pearl-white gloves.

  Just outside the circle of candlelight sat another man.

  “Blond works,” a familiar voice said. “Get dressed. We have much to discuss and little time to do so.”

  CHAPTER 87

  WE returned to the road.

  Zhou and I settled into the backseat. Chen, in a second transformation, had slipped on the hat and gloves then slid behind the wheel.

  The master spy checked his watch. “My alibi needs maintaining and we need to finalize your disappearance.”

  He was again speaking Japanese.

  “A minor detour before we begin,” I said. “Convince me you aren’t carting me off to put a bullet in my head elsewhere. Not that you’d be able to pull it off.”

  Zhou nodded. “ ‘An enemy well regarded is better than a friend you doubt.’ Do you remember that?”

  “Yes, a favorite of yours.”

  “An original.”

  “I stand corrected. What about it?”

  “You, my friend, are the enemy.”

  My eyebrows shot up but I said nothing. Rather, I took a moment to consider his pet phrase in my current situation. Put another way, the slogan laid claim to the idea that a principled enemy could be more reliable than a friend or acquaintance easily tempted. Zhou’s axiom was about paranoia versus trust. About loyalty and virtue on the other side of the fence. It was about the political sharks in the political pool in which the master spy swam and made his living. It was about his eternal search for solid ground in a land of too much quicksand. If he actually meant what he said, it might just well be the most backhanded of backhanded praise.

  “You’re serious?”

  “I am.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  His smile was distracted. “Give it time. It is a compliment. Now can we move on?”

  Once in a great while, among enemies, a meeting of minds can be reached. It is a rare thing. It happens when, beneath seemingly insurmountable differences in language or learning or history or culture, a human connection is made.

  Zhou’s expression was open and yielding. His words sounded heartfelt. But words are cheap. Free, in fact. Too many times people say one thing but do another. History is filled with victims who listened and accepted and lost.

  If I made it to the border without him or one of his minions attempting to put a gun to my head, I would know he was sincere. And if he was sincere, I would be honored. That said, he had dropped me into the bottomless pit that was the Farmhouse. Then again, he’d pulled me out too. Flip it once more, and the turnabout was a brilliant way to recruit a reluctant asset. After all, Zhou was a trickster by trade.

  Was this spycraft at its most sophisticated, or an olive branch?

  It could swing either way, so I chose neutral ground.

  “I’m all ears,” I said.

  The master spy had waited with impatience, his face taut, his eyes focused. “Excellent. Now, listen carefully. You will cross the border with Chen as your driver in five hours. Officially, Jim Brodie is on his way to a new execution site. All the right paperwork has been distributed. By tomorrow morning, when the execution does not take place, the news will be out. Until then, each prison thinks the other has you.”

  A vision of the Bone Room rose up in my mind and an involuntary shudder rattled me.

  Zhou’s glance was curious. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. Any problems ahead?”

  “One. Someone or something could trigger an alarm. If this happens, then border guards will stop all Americans.”

  I stared at him. That seemed a major flaw in his escape plan, which was unlike the master manipulator I knew. “So you have a work-around?”

  “Of course. You, my friend, are not American.” Zhou handed me an Italian passport. “I think I came pretty close on short notice. I would prefer you a bit more swarthy. If they notice, just say your Mediterranean tan faded.”

  I opened the passport and was confronted with a thirty-something face of an Italian native by the name of Mario Fabbri. Zhou had indeed found a reasonable likeness. Six foot to my six-one. Broad shouldered, chiseled cheeks, high nose—all were a match. Or close enough.

  Unfortunately, there were two glaring obstacles.

  “The blond hair we took care of,” I said. “The moustache I could have shaved, but he has steel-gray eyes and I have bruises and scabs on my face and an eye that is only half-open.”

  Zhou picked up a manila envelope on the seat between us. “Hospital reports of treatment for a minor accident you were involved in, in Beijing. Plus receipts. Chen will bandage the worst of your wounds. As for the gray eyes, you will find colored contacts in there as well.”

  “You’ve been thorough.”

  He ignored the comment. “A few last details and we are done here. Can you speak Italian?”

  Alarm shot through me. “No.”

  “Say a few things in Italian, then?”

  “A few phrases, sure. Will the border guards know some?”

  “No more than ‘Good afternoon’ or ‘Thank you,’ which you can handle with a smile. Throw out an Italian word or two, then switch to English. But you must speak English with an Italian accent. That they will listen for. Drop the h’s and add a’s to the end of your words. Talk in a singsong voice. You must sound like this”—a light hum rose in his throat—“ ‘Beijing was-a ’eavenly place-a.’ Can you do that?”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “Manage or you will be back where you started. Now for the genius of the plan. You must not ‘shave’ your moustache. You must wear it and flaunt it. Display it proudly.”

  “Because?”

  “We Chinese are fascinated by a full Western moustache. It is your true passport to safety.”

  “How so?”

  “You’ll see, trust me.”

  I nodded unhappily. I had little choice.

  “So, finally, we are done,” Zhou said, pleased at what he saw when he checked his watch.

  “Far from it,” I said.

  CHAPTER 88

  WHY did you really get me out of prison?”

  Zhou’s brow darkened. “I told you. ‘An enemy well regarded . . .’ ”

  I waved my hand at his re-suited cousin in the front seat. “All this is elaborate. You didn’t put it together overnight. What’s changed?”

  His eyes flared, angry at being caught out. “Again you see too much. I had planned to tell you later, but now will work if we hurry. I am fighting for survival and you are part of the solution.”

  Like China itself, the man across the seat from me possessed a strategic and complex way of thinking and was, at times, unfathomable.

  “I need more.”

  “Three simple reasons. First, the man my cousin impersonated has attacked my faction but, with your escape, he is about to find himself taking your place. Second, you Americans need help, and in my modest way I am about to offer some. I live in a twisted world where everyone is a marionette controlled by a puppet master, who is controlled by another puppet master, all the way to the top.”

  “An interesting way to put it.”

  “It’s the truth, though no one speaks it.”

  “I believe you.”

  “You already know my views about your people taking their freedom for granted. Losing freedom is losing half of the American dream. It is a dream people everywhere dream, including Chinese people. We are a good people, our government less so.”

  Coming from an insider within the Chinese governmental apparatus, that was quite a statement.

  I said, “And you’re going to help how?”

  Dark, trouble
d eyes held mine. “You Americans are too cavalier about your freedoms. You are also too cavalier about China. That is my third reason. Have you heard about China’s Hundred-Year Marathon?”

  “I’ve heard the theory.”

  It is the alarming belief among some China watchers that the country, rather than seeking the “peaceful rise” it claims it wants, is actually engaged in a clandestine hundred-year plan to supplant all Western powers, especially American power, then replace them as number one and “harmonize” the world according to “superior” Chinese ideals. Key among the plan’s components is a display of humility and complacency while China engages in an all-out grab for Western technological, military, and economic intelligence.

  The plan also states that China can eventually achieve dominance when it has accumulated enough money, intel, and power. China watchers claim Chinese leaders are working toward this goal in hundreds of different ways with programs funded by the State, including cybertheft, the purchasing of industrial and technological secrets it can’t steal, cornering the market on rare minerals and other valuable resources, buying influence in as many third-world countries as possible, and on and on.

  The master spy wagged his head in disapproval. “You disappoint me, Brodie. It is no theory. It is operational.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “Because a lot of it involves espionage.”

  The fire in his eyes was impossible to ignore. I was no longer looking into the hypnotizing orbs of a rattlesnake. Or the cold, dead beads of a shark on the prowl. For the first time in our many encounters, I was seeing the unadulterated passion of the man behind the spy.

  “By the whole government or just a faction?”

  “You ask the right question. It is being pushed by our ying pai. The right-wing nationalists. They have their hooks in some of the top leadership. Many others follow them willingly or are dragged along. It is not absolute but momentum is strong.”

  “I see.”

  “My point is simple. My country is moving chess pieces and your people do not even know they are in the game.”

  This last was a powerful image, hints of which I’d encountered on my Asian travels over the years.